Just like the past days, also today we started hiking at 6am. I was still a little bit tired because last night was super windy. At 2:50am my tent collapsed on me so I had to pack it and cowboy camp. Also the morning was super chilly so I didn’t want to leave my quilt. Anyways, today is the 4th of July aka the Independence day aka one of the most popular holidays in the US. It is also quite a nice coincidence that we will spend it in South Lake Tahoe. A super nice and common place to spend this holiday. We didn’t really plan for it to happen but it is nice we will be in a town. I have never experienced that in the US before so it will be cool to get the full experience. We only had to do 8 miles (12.8km) to get to our exit point. There we would start hitching. It took us some time to get us a ride. Ann and Lorenz were unsuccessful but me and Stefi got it. Like pros. This cool dude (possibly a bit stoned) from Idaho drove us all the way to the trail angel’s place where we planned on staying. 

We got the tip from the Traffic Cone’s trail family who also happened to spend there the night before us. We met Connie – the trail angel – and she gave us a ride to the center where we met the other tramily. All of us except for Aces went for lunch to this super cool all you can eat restaurant. Just the place for hungry hikers. So far South Lake Tahoe has been a really nice town. The village kind of reminds me of Whistler. Plus there is a gondola in the center! After the lunch we did our resupply and then went back to the trail angel’s place. (Not) surprisingly the other group decided to spend one more night here so we all ended up having dinner together. Afterwards I played a bit of piano (yes there was one again!) and then went walked to the lake to watch the fireworks. It was actually a really nice experience. Sure there were a lot of people but nothing too crazy. We got to bed around midnight and howling coyotes brought me to sleep.